Family Dinner & Dancing

Tuesday night we enjoyed getting all the families together—the first time we’ve been able to get all the dads, moms, & kids here at once. We were thrilled to see how everyone related so well to each other. What wonderful families these kids have!

Each family brought a favorite family recipe to share with the group—we had Jeff’s chili mac, Elbert’s Polynesian chicken, the secret Bellah Waldorf chicken salad recipe that’s been authentically replicated by California Pizza Kitchen, and Alden’s favorite dutch apple pies.

The kids shared their be-bop rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We had our Always Vivacious Actress play Goldilocks, and Lydia played the papa bear drum, Laurun played the mama bear drum, and Alden played the wee bear drum while Elex and Grace accompanied with shakers saying “yeah!”

I’d like to elaborate on the process used in teaching what might seem like a simple percussion accompaniment to this story/song. Using what I’ve learned in the Orff-Schulwerk process of teaching music to children, I first taught the children body percussion based on the call & response elements in the story/song. For the papa bear response, the kids patted their laps in the rhythm of the words, for the mama bear they clapped to the words, and for the baby bear they snapped. This helped them quickly learn a rhythm pattern that included quarter notes, eighth notes, and rests. If I had attempted to teach the kids this rhythm by asking them to follow the notes, or even “one-and-a two-and-a three—rest,” it would have taken a long time and would probably have caused frustration and anxiety. Instead, by following the rhythm of the word pattern, they quickly picked up on the rhythm pattern, easily replicated it with body percussion, and then effortlessly transferred this to percussion instruments. And we were able to share our creative results with only a three minute impromptu rehearsal. You’ll learn more about the beauty and joy of the Orff process in future entries here.

One of the kids wanted to sing our poetic rendition of “My Favorite Things,” so we gave an unrehearsed performance of this piece too. The kids are still busy illustrating their books based on this poem/song. We have some artists illustrating with cut paper, one with pencil sketches, and others with colored pencil illustrations.

The kids then helped their parents learn a simple and delightful folk dance to “The Chimes of Dunkirk.” It was very special to have some kids dancing with their parents as partners, one pair of girls partnering off, and one parent couple actually dancing with each other!

Our wonderful evening together ended with more great conversation, the kids running around and having tickle contests with their dads, and as Alden told me later, some impressive speed-crawling by one dad. We are grateful to have such a fantastic group of families in our “Circle” and to see the special friendships growing.